Antideuterons from dark matter annihilations and hadronization model dependence

TL;DR

This paper calculates antideuteron fluxes from dark matter annihilations using HERWIG++, highlighting the sensitivity of results to the hadronization model and comparing with PYTHIA to estimate uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces an event-by-event calculation of antideuteron yields with HERWIG++, and compares hadronization model dependencies to previous PYTHIA-based results.

Findings

Antideuteron fluxes vary significantly with the hadronization model used.

HERWIG++ yields differ from PYTHIA, indicating model-dependent uncertainties.

Final states with more than two particles are relevant for heavy dark matter annihilations.

Abstract

We calculate the antideuteron yield in dark matter annihilations on an event-by-event basis using the HERWIG++ Monte Carlo generator. We present the resulting antideuteron fluxes for quark and gauge boson final states. As deuteron production in the coalescence model depends on momentum differences between nucleons that are small compared to \Lambda_{QCD}, it is potentially very sensitive to the hadronization model employed. We therefore compare our antideuteron yields to earlier results based on PYTHIA, thereby estimating their uncertainties. We also briefly discuss the importance of n>2 final states for annihilations of heavy DM particles.